


Until My Last Breath

by jsl



Category: Bollywood - Fandom, Jab Tak Hai Jaan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Parenthood, comatose character, referenced child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:48:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26444422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsl/pseuds/jsl
Summary: Samar returns to London to help Akira with her documentary, and he runs into Meera's mother, who has some shocking information for him.
Relationships: Meera/Samar, Samar & Pooja
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Until My Last Breath

Samar stood on the street corner and smiled as Akira came into view.

_What if…_? He asked himself.

He shook that thought off, though. She was his friend, and he would accept nothing more.

There was not room enough for anyone in his heart, save Meera.

“Samar!” Akira squealed and made her way across the street, barely avoiding being hit by a car.

She tackled him in a hug, and he playfully swung her around and dropped her back to her feet where he’d previously been standing. She began speaking, but he was no longer paying attention.

Behind Akira, a young boy, no older than nine or ten, spoke to a woman he held by the hand, a woman he recognized.

Ten years had passed, and she showed her age more than she had the last time he saw her, but as she looked up and caught his eyes, he found himself smiling awkwardly at Meera’s mother.

“Samar!” she breathed, her eyes wide with shock.

“Excuse me, Akira,” Samar murmured as he stepped around her. He took the remaining few steps and stopped in front of Pooja and the young boy.

“Hello, Poojaji,” he said softly.

“Samar. Oh, Samar,” she whispered and pulled him into a hug. He could feel her shoulders shaking and see the little boy looking at them sadly. Pooja abruptly stepped back, straightening her hem and brushing her hands against her pants. She cleared her throat, and her watery eyes met his. “How are you?”

“I’m fine; how are you? Are you okay?” he asked, a peculiar feeling building in his stomach.

“I…” she began, and she cleared her throat again. “I’m sorry, Samar, but we are truly in a hurry.”

“I see,” he murmured; he couldn’t help but feel hurt. “Don’t let me keep you, then.”

Pooja’s eyes softened. “If we didn’t have somewhere to be, I’d love to stay and catch up, Samar. We must go, though.”

“My mum is in the hospital,” the young boy chimed in, his big brown eyes wide and sad.

Samar felt as though he’d been hit in the stomach and had all the air knocked out of him. He stared at the boy in front of him.

He was tall for his age and thin, and he had his mother’s fair skin and black hair, though his was short and combed neatly to the side. Who would have thought such a picture of innocence could have delivered such gut-wrenching news.

Samar met Pooja’s eyes again.

“Meera?” he whispered, and she nodded.

“She was in an accident a week ago and has been in a coma since. Her prognosis…It isn’t good, Samar,” she said softly.

Samar breathed unsteadily. His whole body seemed to shake, and he wanted to find the nearest trashcan and lose his lunch, but he swallowed and pulled all of his military stoicism around him like a shield.

“May I see her?”

Pooja looked down at the child then behind Samar to Akira, who he’d forgotten about, then back to him.

“Samar…I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

“Please, Poojaji, please. I need to see her,” he begged.

“Nani, visiting hours will begin soon,” the boy reminded his grandmother.

“Tika, beta,” she assured the boy, then looked back up at Samar. “Okay, Samar. Come with us.”

Samar turned to Akira, and he saw the despair and tears in her eyes. He felt bad for her, but he had told her there would be nothing between them. She nodded and seemed to pull herself together.

“Go, Samar. The documentary can wait,” she said professionally.

He grasped her hands in his. “Thank you, Akira.”

He squeezed one more time, then released her and turned back to Pooja.

“Let’s go.”

At the hospital, Imraan met them in the waiting room. He barely blinked at Samar’s presence before he was grasping him by the shoulder and welcoming him.

He then turned to Pooja.

“I was beginning to worry, my love,” he said as he put an arm around Pooja’s shoulders and held her close. He pulled the little boy into the hug with his other arm, then ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Nana Imraan!” the boy said and straightened his hair. The adults chuckled weakly at the boy’s complaint.

“Shall we go back now?” Imraan asked, and everyone nodded.

As he walked in the hospital room behind the three others, Samar sucked in a breath.

She was just as beautiful as she was the last time he saw her, though she was incredibly pale and had tubes and wires connected everywhere. A white bandage wrapped around her skull, and she had casts on an arm and one of her legs. Samar watched as the boy walked over to his mother’s bed, hopped up on the edge as gently as possible, and took his mother’s uninjured hand in his own, being careful of the wires.

“Mummy, it’s me, Sammy. Please wake up, Mummy. Nani took me to the church today, and we prayed for you, and then we went to lunch, and then we saw Roger Uncle and Anna. Roger Uncle said he and Anna would come to see you tomorrow. After we left, we were coming here, and we met Mr. Samar. He has my name, Mummy, and he seems really nice. If you wake up, you can meet him. He came here to see you! Please wake up, Mummy. “

The child continued to speak for several minutes, but all Samar could do was stare at him. ‘ _Roger Uncle?’_ he asked himself. _Not ‘Daddy?’ And ‘He has my name?’_ Things were starting to fall in place, and now that he looked at the child, he saw his own nose and his own jaw. There were his eyebrows and his ears. He’d noted earlier the child couldn’t be older than nine or ten, and that would fit.

He turned to Pooja and Imraan with wide eyes. “Poojaji, is he mine?” he kept his voice low so as not to disturb the boy’s conversation with his mother.

She looked as though she wouldn’t answer, but she exchanged a look with Imraan and something in her eyes changed. She gave a little nod.

“Yes, Samar. He is.”

She stepped forward and gently took his arm.

“Come out in the hallway with me, beta. We will talk.”

Samar couldn’t refuse and allowed her to lead him out.

“Sit, beta,” she gestured to the chairs outside the door.

He did so, and he put his head in his hands and roughly grabbed his hair, breathing deeply.

“Why did she never tell me?” he asked, his voice straining to stay calm.

“I will tell you what I can Samar, what she told me, but I don’t know everything,” Pooja began, and he nodded jerkily, though he kept his head down.

“Meera has always held fast to her faith and her prayers, but like a child, she clung to the idea that you had to offer something in return for blessings. It’s not a bad idea in essentials, I don’t think, but to the extent Meera took it, it was harmful. She finally came to learn that God is not a tradesman. He has His plan, and sometimes what we want fits in that plan; others it doesn’t. Before she learned this however, you had your accident, and she prayed for your life; in return, she’d give you up. You know this. After you left, however, she discovered her pregnancy, and she came to me for advice. I told her to contact you, but by that time you’d left, and you’d gone into training back in India, and she took it as a sign that she shouldn’t bother you. I urged her to try again, but she was set in her belief. At eight months, Meera went into labor, still stubbornly refusing to contact you, and she gave birth to a healthy little boy, Samar, or Sammy as we call him, and a not-so-healthy little girl. Meera named her Sarah, for she was our little princess for the time we had her.”

Samar couldn’t stop the tears escaping. He felt sick to his stomach, and there was a horrible pain in his chest. He’d had a little girl. He could just see her, a picture of her mother with sparkling dark eyes and a cute little nose. He barely felt Pooja’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing it in comfort, but after a few minutes of grieving for the daughter he’d never known, he pulled himself together. He needed to hear the rest of what Pooja had to say.

“Go on,” he told her when he could speak again. She resumed speaking but kept her hand on his shoulder in silent support.

“Sarah’s organs were not fully developed, and she had holes in both her lungs. They performed surgery after surgery, and she fought. For almost a year, she hung on, and Imraan and I and her father begged Meera to contact you, and she tried once more, but you were not available. Right after the phone call, Sarah took a turn for the worse, and Meera believed she was being punished for wavering in her vow to stay away from you. She prayed daily that Sarah would be healed. She begged and bargained, but one day, the fight was too much for Sarah, and she was gone. Meera was devastated. We all were, but she had a crisis of faith, and she spent many months railing at God and questioning him. I convinced her to speak with the priest, and he was able to help her see what we had been telling her for quite some time. That’s my Meera, stubborn as they come. It takes her a little longer to accept things. But I fear…I fear she is not stubborn enough to hang on now, Samar. Like Sarah, I feel that now the fight is too much.”

Samar met Pooja’s eyes. They were red and overflowing with tears. He pulled her into a hug.

“Don’t say that, Poojaji. Meera will fight. She will!” he said fiercely.

Pooja sobbed, and Samar soothed her as much as he could. When she had herself under control, he spoke again.

“But Poojaji, if she realized that, why did she not contact me then? I would have come back. I would have been there for her and for our son.”

“She was ashamed, beta. Out of her misconception of God, she sent you away. From sheer stubbornness, she kept you away even when you were most needed. When she learned of her error, she believed you would never forgive her for what she had done. You would never meet your daughter. She didn’t think you would be able to see past that. So she vowed to work hard every day and to be the best mother she could to Sammy. She devoted her time to Sammy and to work.”

“I am angry, yes. Very angry. But I love Meera. How could I not forgive her? It is not as though she killed our daughter. She did try to contact me, but it was not to be. How can I argue with that?” he asked weakly, his mind racing. _Indeed, how can I argue with fate? With God?_

Later that evening, Samar stood in a place he thought he’d never set foot in again. He stared up at the depiction of Christ on the cross.

“I swore to steal her love from You.”

He paused for several moments, keeping his gaze constant and breathing deeply.

He sighed.

“I was wrong to dare such a thing. I, too, made mistakes. Not just Meera. I laughed at her very real and very profound faith instead of trying to understand it, instead of fighting to make her see the truth. Like a child with his toy taken away, I stomped off in a tantrum.”

Several minutes ticked by, and the silence was a balm to the turmoil in his mind.

“I am sorry. Please forgive me.”

He took a deep breath and got to his knees.

“I do not deserve it. I have no right to ask. I cannot help but do so, though. Please, spare Meera’s life. Give her back to me, back to her parents, back to Sammy. I will work every day to deserve her, to deserve Sammy. If it’s not in Your will, though, I won’t storm off like a child this time. I will devote the rest of my life to Sammy, to raising him to be a good man, a better man than me. I beg of you, though, not just for my sake, but for Sammy’s. Please give her back to us.”

He bowed his head in several more minutes of silent prayer before pushing himself to his feet, sending one last pleading glance to the figure on the wall, and turning to walk away.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have a thing for writing stories in which a female character has a child, and the father does not find out until later. I don't actually have any children, so it's not personal or anything, but I'm sure a psychiatrist would have some things to say about this favored plot of mine. Oh well, it's fiction, and it's for my entertainment (and hopefully yours), so whatevs! :)
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments below. I'm debating keeping this as a one-shot. I may expand on it if there's enough interest.
> 
> Off to work on my The King: Eternal Monarch fanfics! :)


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